What the silly ‘Latinos Por Pratt’ salsa video has to say about the LA mayoral race

You know the political season is here when campaigns start making fools of themselves trying to sway Latino voters.

In the Los Angeles mayoral race, that period began last weekend.

On Friday, a social media account called Latinos Por Pratt released an AI-animated music video praising mayoral candidate and reality TV star Spencer Pratt. It begins with a balanced, sunglasses-wearing Pratt rolling a garbage can full of detritus and Mayor Karen Bass past a crowd of cheering Angelenos. The Hollywood sign is visible in the background as the title “Spencer, Saca La Bassura” flashes on the screen — Spencer, Take Out Trashy Karen, with “Bassura” a play on the mayor’s last name and the Spanish word for “trash.”

Check out the scenes of Bass playing a guest on his infamous trip to Ghana while the Palisades are burning. Splice at Pratt dances with his wife, Heidi Montag, on stage at a street party where spectators wave Mexican and US flags. And because the majority of LAs Latino are overwhelmingly of Mexican descent, this thing was backed by peppy accordion, dramatic guitar plucks and bold tuba, right? OK?

No, no.

Lyrics like “Latinos for Pratt sing/Because we’re tired of this dirty beat” play on a brassy salsa beat that’s more Miami and Cuban than LA, where Latinos are mostly Mexican and Central American heritage and the city’s sounds — corridos tumbados, cumbias, Latin rock and pop — reflect that Latin rock and pop.

That didn’t stop many ignorant, non-Latino Pratt fans and fangirls from going wild online. And it didn’t stop Bass from joining the we-need-Latino-voters fiesta.

Shortly after the release of the video, a group called Latinos Con Bass brought out big-name speakers in Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Heights— State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, head of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Angélica Salas, President of the Service Employees International Union California David Huerta — to pledge support to those who participated to remind all working people to remind all working people. Bass greeted the crowd with a peppy “¡Thank you!” – a common complaint of Latino politicos for decades but not so good now in the face of César Chávez, the labor leader who recently received a New York Times investigation that he once sexually assaulted teenage girls.

Latinos Con Bass emerged as a bunch of establishment types sticking to their own instead of anything alive. But at least we know the history of those involved. Latinos Por Pratt seems to be one guy: Adrian E. Alvarez, a Cuban-American whose online profile says he divides his time between the Miami area and L.A. If the attorney by trade – who did not respond to multiple requests for comment – was really serious about winning the Latino vote for his guy, he would have released a corrido instead of a salsa tune. The Mexican ballad form has been released by Angelenos for decades in everything from the tragic deaths of Robert F. Kennedy and Kobe Bryant and his daughter to the capture of many narco lords.

Those songwriters got it. Alvarez’s dis track doesn’t do that. And his use of Cuban Spanish on social media to promote it – the carajo, fajame, I did – we favor the same as Mexican Spanish as güey, entrale, again raza said a young man who did not know South LA from South Beach.

But to dismiss “Spencer, Saca La Bassura” as a fake joke is to miss its point in this political moment. In a year when Latinos nationally will make or break the Democrats’ bid to take back Congress, they will play a very important role in the LA mayoral race.

And the Bass campaign needs Latinos more than any of his opponents — because there’s no guarantee he’ll get them.

A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll released last month and co-sponsored by The Times found that 56% of voters viewed the mayor unfavorably, the only candidate with a majority of respondents who viewed him unfavorably. He is the top choice among Latinos – 29%, compared to Pratt’s 16%. But 27% of Latinos remain undecided about who they want for mayor, the highest percentage of any race.

Pratt has some name recognition among Latinos as a C-list celebrity, but he’s also a registered Republican who thinks LA should connect with the Trump administration’s leviathan, a position as popular with Angelenos as rooting for the San Diego Padres. That clearly presents an opportunity for Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor to the left of Bass – if she can handle it smartly. But Raman represents the district with the lowest Latino population in the city and has yet to make a name for himself across the city — no wonder a Berkeley survey found that 9% of Latinos favored him, trailing even Presbyterian pastor Rae Huang.

That handicap should give Bass — whose children are Mexican American and who has worked with the Latino LA political movement for nearly his entire political career — an advantage among Latinos. But all that stardom didn’t win him the Latino vote four years ago against Rick Caruso. And LA’s biggest problems during the mayor’s first term – homelessness, battered streets, broken streetlights, flooding from Trump’s arrival – disproportionately affected the Latino areas of LA. Even the inferno that engulfed the Palisades led to the loss of thousands of jobs for babysitters, cleaners and gardeners who kept the area clean.

His campaign will highlight all of Bass’s accomplishments and draw tributes like they did at the Plaza de la Raza event, but he lost the healthy LA narrative long ago.

Pratt — who doesn’t seem to know Los Angeles outside of the Westside and the television studios — will have to do more than Bass and Raman to attract Latinos. But by repeatedly calling the mayor “Karen Basura” — an obvious juvenile insult, but nonetheless one that sticks once you hear it — he at least made Spanish a more permanent part of his campaign than his rivals. And Alvarez’s music video, silly and un-LA as it is, speaks to the excitement among at least one Latino Pratt supporter that will remain more attractive and inspired than anything Bass and Raman’s campaigns will come up with.

That fact seems to have already made Bass wince. He responded to “Spencer, Saca La Bassura” on social media a few days later with a photo of people at his Plaza de la Raza rally holding “Latinos Con Bass” signs with the caption “Latinos Con Bass > Ai Latinos.” It was intended for political flexibility but turned out to be insecure. Meanwhile, Latinos Por Pratt just released another video, this time featuring Pratt as Batman playing a Raman-like Bass as the villainous Two-Face.

Playing, again, in salsa. That’s weak sauce. Can someone try indeed got Latino LA?

I promise you: Thank you.